Welcome back. This is episode 18 of Books Closed.

This episode is sponsored by Feldman Manufacturing, High Quality Handmade Tattoo

Machines by Brandon Feldman, and Tattoo Smart, your resource for digital tattoo design tools.

This week I got to sit down with one of my favorite tattooers and painters, Robert design tools.

This week I got to sit down with one of my favorite tattooers and painters, Robert Ryan.

I headed down to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he tattoos that electric tattoo amongst a great crew of other talented tattooers.

I think that this conversation speaks for itself, so I'm just going to go ahead and play it for you now.

Have you ever had any formal art education?

After I started tattooing, I took some courses on etching and screen printing, but before tattooing, no self-taught.

Yeah. Art brute, as they say. Right. How long into your tattooing, no self-taught. Yeah. Art brute, as they say.

Right.

Yeah.

How long into your tattooing was it before you started to seek that sort of situation?

Maybe about five years.

Yeah.

I felt as though like my paintings were starting to get a little bit, like like on a level where I felt stuff was starting

to happen artistically rather than just painting flash and I was like maybe I shouldn't explore

like a different avenue you know maybe it would expand what was going to happen in the paintings

and stuff so yeah took some courses. No formal. She's a really

good teacher. She teaches, you know, collegiate college academic printmaking and stuff like that,

but it was a private course. So did that stuff have an influence on your, on your tattoo work or your flash painting that

you had hoped?

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